


A Time for Everything

by steelneena



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Genre: Gen, but it's hopeful, it's supposed to be uplifting. A bit melancholy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 06:05:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9109858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena/pseuds/steelneena
Summary: Ecclesiastes 3:1-81 There is a time for everything,and a season for every activity under the heavens:2     a time to be born and a time to die,a time to plant and a time to uproot,3     a time to kill and a time to heal,a time to tear down and a time to build,4     a time to weep and a time to laugh,a time to mourn and a time to dance,5     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,6     a time to search and a time to give up,a time to keep and a time to throw away,7     a time to tear and a time to mend,a time to be silent and a time to speak,8     a time to love and a time to hate,a time for war and a time for peace.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SwiftSnowmane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwiftSnowmane/gifts).



> Short, super brief introspective bit because me and @swiftsnowmane have too many feelings. I should add to this.

Leia had managed to pull Luke into the celebration for a little while, but his heart just wasn’t in it. He’d slunk away into the forests of Endor seeking solace. The sounds of nature soothed him, and he immersed himself in it’s rhythms, in the Living Force surrounding him. He’d found himself an old long and sat. So much had happened in so little time. Leia was his sister, his father was returned to the light, and promptly lost to death.

 _Lost to the Force_ , Luke tried to console himself. _No,_ returned _to the Force._ There was an itch in his mind that Luke couldn’t quite scratch. Emblazoned on his memory, the smiling faces of great Jedi, long past.

_Look to the future Luke, don’t dwell in the past. Hope is before you and around you. You will help create the Future. It will be what you choose to make it._

He looked up through the trees to the sky above, not black, but a deep, rich blue, the exploded remains of the Death Star hovering in between stars that sparked like the meeting of two lightsabers. A tremor ran through him, bodily, as he recalled all that occurred. He’d been running on pure adrenaline the whole evening. Adrenaline and...something _else_. Something in the moment when his father had surged forward, lifted the Emperor and thrown him into the Abyss. Something in the moment that he’d held his father’s stump hand. The stump hand he’d created. Something in the moment when he’d locked eyes with the man who had begot him for both the first and last time.

They must have once been so blue it was unbearable. Like his own. But his father’s had grown pale. Pale from the absence of colour to his face, from the absence of light in his life, from the darkness he’d so thoroughly inhabited.

The night sky felt warm on his face, like the rising of Tatoo I in the early morning, before Tatoo II rose and the heat was blistering. It felt warm like his father’s last smile.

Alone in the forest, Luke wept.

He had not wept as his father’s breath left his body. He had not wept when he burned him on the pyre. He had only smiled to see his father’s form, free, standing with the others that had gone before. Even through his tears, Luke smiled. His father had died free. His father had died fulfilled.

 _It’s a good death, Luke_. His Uncle Owen’s old words rang in his head, from long ago, when they’d tried to save their second last Eopie. They’d been a mated pair. The female had been mauled to death, saving the male. _She saved him, Luke. It’s a good death. You can’t ask for more._

Tatooine was a harsh place and Luke had always understood that, but deep within him, as much as he was a child of the desert, he did not have the heart for it.

 _All things belong to the desert Luke_. Aunt Beru once told him. _That’s what your Grandmother Shmi would have said._

All things, he knew now, belonged to the Force. And his father had died a good death. A worthy death. His father understood. His father was a child of the desert.

“Thank you for my life, Father,” he said, smiling, his tears shed. “Thank you for believing in me, as I believed in you. As I will always believe in you,” He stood, a new strength in his heart. In the distance, he could hear Leia calling out to him.There would be another time to grieve. Now was a time to rejoice.

His heart light, he set back out to join the celebration.


End file.
